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There are spectacular sunrises and sunsets in Florida and the skies can be breathtakingly beautiful during the day. And, if that's not enough, the sky also offers plenty of treats after the sun goes down. The nighttime heavenly show will be featured at the 28th Annual Winter Star Party, an event that attracts as many as 600 amateur and professional astronomers from around the world to the Lower Florida Keys from Feb. 20-26. The big draw is an opportunity for a 180-degree viewing of the Southern Cross and other constellations. The Southern Cross, comets, stars and other celestial objects are especially visible in the Keys, with its extreme southern location and the relative lack of...

Related "Astronomy and Astrophysics" Articles

There are spectacular sunrises and sunsets in Florida and the skies can be breathtakingly beautiful during the day.
And, if that's not enough, the sky also offers plenty of treats after the sun goes down.
The nighttime heavenly show will be featured...

Lunar eclipses are intriguing to many of us and there is another one today. But since we won’t see it here in Florida we might just miss out, unless you hit up Google today starting at 2:20 pm EST.They are hosting a live view on the Google YouTube channel...

In 1972, President Nixon gave his blessing to ramp up Apollo's successor, the Space Transportation System (STS). Two years later, work began on the first space shuttle, a test vehicle that NASA planned to christen Constitution.
Those plans changed after...

Atheist astronomer Martin Rees is the newest winner of the Templeton Prize, which is considered the world's largest monetary award. Rees will be awarded the prize in June at Buckingham Palace. The Templeton Prize honors a person who has made “exceptional

The Orlando Science Center will host children’s book author Marianne Berkes for a reading and book signing from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, May 7. She will appear in the earth and space science hall, “Our Planet, Our Universe,” and read several of her

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's new plan for NASA takes too much money from the the agency's human spaceflight program to fix funding in other parts of the agency, said one member ofÂ a presidential panel that met last year to recommend chang

Once it enters orbit Friday, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is set to be the first to successfully visit a dwarf planet.
"Dawn is about to make history," Robert Mase, project manager for the Dawn mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,...

Some 12.8 billion light years away, astronomers have spotted an object of almost impossible brightness — the most luminous object ever seen in such ancient space. It's from just 900 million years after the big bang, and the old quasar — a shining object...

Even to the naked eye, the night sky over Palmer Park plays out ancient battles. To the east, Orion the Hunter readies a blow so vivid on this particular evening that his outline can be traced with a finger. Beside Orion, his quarry: Taurus...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. When Galileo viewed Jupiter through his telescope in 1610, he saw four dim objects near it that he assumed were stars. Repeated observations revealed that these "stars" orbited Jupiter like our own moon circles Earth....

As if being an astronaut isn't cool enough, John Grunsfeld will soon join Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in the elite band of space explorer legends.After five space shuttle missions, the Chicago native and Highland Park High School graduate will be...

Astronomers have their own version of the single person's dilemma: Do you wait by the phone for a call from that certain someone? Or do you make the call yourself and risk getting shot down? Instead of love, of course, astronomers are looking for alien...

With clouds and rain blurring the sky, it wasn't easy to see Jupiter on Friday night, when it drew closest to Earth and was on the opposite side of the sky from the sun.
But you still can get a great view of the solar system's largest planet on...

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is going to be the star of the skies on Friday evening, starting at 7 p.m.That's when it will draw to its closest point to Earth and also be on the opposite side of the sky from the sun.When all three...

A huge asteroid will make a near-Earth pass Monday night, giving us a preview of an event that could have our descendants sweating.
Asteroid 2004 BL86, about five football fields wide, will come within 745,000 miles of Earth -- about three times as far...

The oldest planetary system ever found has been spotted by astronomers. The ancient star and five small, Earth-like planets are about 11.2 billion years old.
Until now, scientists questioned whether rocky planets could have formed so long ago, just 2.6...

A mountainous asteroid will make a near-Earth pass Monday night, giving us a preview of an event that could have our descendants sweating, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Asteroid 2004 BL86, about five football fields wide, will come within 745,000...

An asteroid five football fields wide will make a near-Earth flyby on Monday, and you may be able to see it at the witching hour with a pair of strong binoculars.
Late Monday -- particularly at midnight -- will be prime time for trying to catch a glimpse...

Pluto, get ready for your close-up.
After traveling nine years across more than 3 billion miles of space, a spacecraft the size of a grand piano is about to give humanity its first high-resolution view of the dwarf planet that's about two-thirds the size...

As part of a research team studying galaxies, two University of Maryland scientists recently helped find a wild one.
It doesn't fit into the two main galaxy shape categories and is even a bit too odd to belong with those astronomers call...